Bayfield-area residents made a straight-forward request of the speed boat rally
organizers and participants. Photo by Ros Nelson.Editor's note: The first-of-its-kind cigarette boat rally in western Lake Superior was held July 30. Twenty-three high-performance
boats each capable of traveling 100 mph and generating the noise of a jet airplane engine took part in the event that started and finished in Ashland, Wisconsin. Of the approximately 250 people who lined the shore in Bayfield during the rally, half or more came out to protest, according to local resident and author Jeff Rennicke.
Rennicke, a member of the Friends of the Apostle Islands Lakeshore, helped organize the protests. The Ashland Daily Press quoted
him saying, "Bayfield has a reputation as a mecca for silent sports. We don't feel this kind of use is appropriate too loud, too fast, too many."
The Friends group and the Bayfield Area Chamber of Commerce expressed concern for the event, the Duluth News Tribune reported.
Upon reading the news coverage, this magazine contacted Rennicke and he agreed to share his thoughts from the day after the boat rally. In their wake
Thoughts in the silence following the 'first annual' Apostle Islands cigarette boat rally
By Jeff Rennicke 
| One of the 23 speed boats to participate in the July 30 Apostle Islands poker run docks in Bayfield.
Photo by Ros Nelson |
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Sunday. A quiet morning on the waterfront. The pack of 23 cigarette boats, the snarling, rainbow-colored slivers of speed and spray that gathered yesterday in these waters, has buzzed in
and out of our town and for better or for worse has left the Apostles in its wake. The knot of protesters walking the Bayfield dock with signs reading "Speed Kills" and "Shhhhhh!" have all gone home. In the quiet that descends back on Lake Superior like a long sigh, I slip my kayak into the water and paddle out to be alone, to think and to savor the silence once again.
There are no other boats on the water this early, only a flock of gulls. Even from a distance I can hear the slap-slap-slap of their wings as they lift off leaving behind only the soft shush of the waves strumming the shore. Slipping gladly into that silence, I fall into the hypnotic rhythm of my paddling and let my mind drift to the events of the last few months.
It has been a roller coaster, like paddling hard in huge swells
blown up by an unseen storm far offshore, the ups and downs of emotions. On December 8, 2004, the crest: the designation of over 80 percent of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore as the Gaylord A. Nelson Wilderness, 33,000 acres, by far Wisconsin's largest.
The wilderness of the Apostles is not the howling, head-spinning, make-you-weak-in-the-knees kind of wilderness found in some national parks. There are no sky-high waterfalls or bottomless canyons, no row
upon row of nameless, snow-capped peaks outreaching every horizon. Even the larger islands like Stockton are barely big enough to contain a day of hard hiking. In a kayak you can circle the islands in just a few days of paddling.
Here the wilderness is found in small things the rasp of storm waves on an empty beach, a line of shorebirds moving low and fast along the water at the edge of sight, the slow groan of ice as the lake freezes, or the
sparkle of northern lights glinting overhead. It is embroidered in bear tracks in the mud, the rumor of wolves, and the ancient silence of the bogs. It is the bass drum of waves pounding the shoreline of Outer Island 25 miles out and the quiet drip, drip, drip of a spring sun melting a winter's ice along the mainland shore. And the creation of the Gaylord Nelson Wilderness says it will stay that way.
A few months later, the National Geographic Society recognized the special qualities of these islands in the July/August issue of National Geographic Traveler. There it was reported that respondents to a survey listed the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and Bayfield, Wisconsin, as the most pristine national park unit and gateway community in the United States. Not Yellowstone, not Yosemite, not the Grand Canyon but the Apostles.
And then came the cigarette boats.
Billed as the First Annual Apostle Islands Poker Run sponsored by Minnesota-based Apostle Islands Offshore, the event attempted to attract up to 50 cigarette boat drivers to collect a playing card at each of five locations scattered among the Apostles.
Twenty-three boats signed up for the first-ever organized large gathering of high-speed boats on western Lake Superior. Because of the number of boats, they would not, the National Park Service said, be allowed
to enter the park. But there was a way around that. The boundaries of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore extend a quarter mile out from each of the islands. Like threading through a collection of pylons, the boats could, if they stayed a quarter mile out, slalom their way among the islands and never technically enter the park. So the course was set right through the heart of the Apostles.
Paddling along the silent shore, I try to sort out what bothered me so much about that. It is not powerboats in general that I object to. The Apostles have a long history of powerboat use. I own a powerboat myself. The boundaries of the Gaylord Nelson Wilderness were drawn carefully and specifically to allow the continued use of powerboats among the islands. Quiet, responsible power boating will always have a place here.
But this was different.
It was about noise. In the 2004 Visitor Survey conducted by the National Park Service, 80 percent of the people who come to the Apostle Islands rated "Natural sounds/quiet" as an important resource. At the poker run, four boats were ticketed for exceeding state noise level standards. Along the shoreline some 300 yards away from the speeding boats, private citizens monitoring decibel levels got readings of over 100,
which is as loud as a jet engine. Though the boats themselves did not cross the boundaries of the wilderness, their noise did.
It was about speed. Although there are no official speed limits on Lake Superior, there should be common sense. On summer days the waters here are flagged with sailboats cupping the wind and tacking back and forth across the channels. Kayakers bob in the waves as they make crossings. Traveling at speeds of up to
90 miles an hour in waters crowded with sailboats, kayaks and small powerboats, is simply dangerous.
And it is about the large groups. Some 70 percent of respondents to the Visitor Survey claimed "solitude" as an important resource among these islands. The sight of 23 boats in a group shatters any sense of solitude.
For me, there was something else. Something that can't be measured in decibels or on surveys. It is the
appreciation of these islands, the stories, the beauty. If I've learned anything living and boating among these islands for the last 15 years it has been that it takes time to really see the Apostle Islands. The islands are difficult to come to know.
There is no one place, no lookout, on land or water where all the islands are visible at once. There are no scenic turnouts or postcard vistas. What is best about these islands, what has led them to be designated the
No. 1 national park area in the United States by that National Geographic Society, is revealed only slowly. Here, you must spend time, look closely, move quietly.
Those aboard the cigarette boats blew by the southern tip of Basswood Island with the wind ripping through the hair. As they went did they imagine the soft calls of the ovenbirds that nest above the brownstone quarry? Did they think, even for a moment, about what their noise sounded like to the folks walking the
singing sands of Julian Bay on Stockton Island as they rounded Anderson Point hell-bent for Devils Island?
At Devils Island, as they picked up one of their precious playing cards, could they hear over the throbbing idle of their monster engines the famous ghostly sounds whispered by the water sloshing in and out of the sea caves? As their boats blurred the waters at 90 miles an hour, putting the whole length of Hermit Island
behind them in less than two minutes, did they have time to wonder at the story of Wilson, the hermit who came here to ponder the meaning of silence and solitude and left behind his name?
Before I turn around to paddle back to Bayfield, I poke the bow of my boat into a sea cave I hadn't noticed on this shoreline before. I watch the sunlight flicker on the rocks. I hope the Poker Run participants didn't
miss the play of light on the ripple rocks in the sea caves or the poignancy of a child's sled that has been embraced over time by a tree on the old farmstead on Sand Island. I hope in their speed their memories of this beautiful place will be something more than a blur.
Perhaps, I think as I back out of the cave and paddle toward home, they will come back but quietly, slowly,
alone or in small groups, forget the poker game and take the time to really see these islands, to listen to the ovenbirds, to think about the stories, to see everything they missed at 90 miles an hour.
Perhaps they will come back to enjoy what is best about these islands, what cannot be measured in dollars or decibels, the things revealed only in slowness and silence.
Jeff Rennicke is the author of the upcoming book Jewels on the Water: Lake Superior's Apostle Islands as
well as nine other books. His work often appears in such publications as National Geographic Adventure, Backpacker and National Geographic Traveler. He lives in Bayfield and is a member of the National Geographic Society's Sustainable Tourism Committee.
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